Vanilla
by Working-On-Sanity
Summary: Gian doesn't buy Suneo ice cream just to be generous. It's more an act of selfish motive. ჯ Gian/Suneo. One-shot.


**Note: **So, I, uh, broke a record with this one, I think. I wrote this with zero prior planning in one sitting, and I have never managed to write over 3000 words at once without having a plot in mind. This serves only as testament to my nastiness. I craved and I wrote. But I have something of an excuse because I saw screenshots of Gian smashing an ice cream cone into Suneo's face and my best friend and I kind of discussed it and yeah. I regret this.

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><p>ჯ Gian doesn't buy Suneo ice cream just to be generous. ჯ<p>

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><p>"Sure is a hot 'un outside today, ain't it?"<p>

That observation was as unnecessary as remarking on the blueness of the sky or the wetness of water, yet somehow a ridiculous understatement. It wasn't merely hot outside. Birds perched on the gutters melted in dollops of feathers. Dogs oozed in oily puddles on porches. The cars lined up along the curb glared sunlight like blades, their tires reduced to mush. The buzz of jarflies droned through the sticky, syrupy air.

Gian angled his hand against his forehead to shield his eyes. He blinked a couple of times before glancing at Suneo.

"Hey," he said, his mouth bunching up in a scowl. "Are you listening to me?" He leaned over the porch banister to clap his hand over Suneo's head. He dug his fingers into Suneo's hair and gave him a persistent shake.

As if rousing from a dream, Suneo groggily reached up to curl his fingers around Gian's wrist. He gave a few weak pushes, more to convince Gian to let go than to force him. When Gian only shook him harder, Suneo let his hand fall limp against his side. He sank forward into Gian's hand with a sigh that made his shoulders droop.

"I don't want to play anymore," he said, rubbing his head against Gian's sweaty palm. The rough strands of his hair felt coarse and sticky. Gian flexed his fingers around Suneo's skull. Suneo winced, and added, "It's too _hot_ out here for playing. I wanna go inside and sit in front of the air conditioner."

"You don't have it all that bad. At least _yer_ ma lets you go outside in shorts. My ma won't let me. She says it's embarrassing."

Gian pinched his eyes into ugly slits and pushed Suneo's head down until a knot in his neck cracked. Suneo yapped in protest. Gian shoved him back, still clutching his hair, and studied him critically. His gaze lingered with envy on the khaki shorts that graciously bared Suneo's legs to whatever breeze managed to leak through the grass. Gian squinted harder. Finally, he gave Suneo a shove that sent him reeling and windmilling for balance.

"You want some ice cream or something?"

Suneo paused in his frantic attempt at smoothing down his hair. Hesitantly, he looked up at Gian through his smashed bangs. "Are you . . . actually offering to buy me some ice cream?"

Gian cleared his throat with a rusty cough, shifted from foot to foot, and slid his hand down his side and into his pocket. He picked through the gritty wads of lint and crushed gum wrappers until his fingers brushed the warm hard disks of coins. He rattled his pocket until the change jangled.

"I got allowance left over." He hefted his big shoulders up in a shrug. "You want some ice cream or not?"

Suneo shrank back at the bite of daring in Gian's voice, but hastily recovered. He drew himself up to full height and skimmed his sweaty hands down his hips before trying to jam them into his pockets. He found that he couldn't, and awkwardly pulled his arms behind his back. He scuffed the side of his loafer over the cracked dirt.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess I could go with you. I don't have anything better to do. I mean, if you were going to get some anyway. I'm way too nice to refuse an offer."

Gian rolled his eyes, and turned to trudge through the yard in his lumbering way. Dry grass scratched at his ankles as he walked. He listened to the crunch of Suneo's shoes behind him and Suneo's shallow puffs of breath. The sun beat down on them like an aggressive mother piling blankets on a sick toddler. Gian could barely breathe. Sweat leaked in tributaries down his forehead, melted into his eyelashes, and stung his eyes like sand.

By the time they skirted into the ice cream parlor, Gian felt as though he had just finished a journey through the Sahara. A little brass bell over the door tinkled to celebrate their arrival. A gust of cool air plowed into them, instantly drying their sopping hair into stiff chunks. Gian clutched a fistful of his stained shirt and scrubbed it over his face until it burned.

By the time he scoured the sweat out of his eyes and could see without being dizzied by multicolored sequins, Suneo had already taken the liberty to saunter toward the counter. He clambered onto a stool and settled himself. His shorts squeaked against the leather cushion.

Imperious as usual, Suneo tossed back his head to fling his forelock away from his face and hooked his arm over the edge of the counter. He examined the vintage posters and old-fashioned menu tacked on the wall.

A woman scraped past the swinging doors from the kitchen and bustled up to Suneo, swiping her hands dry on her apron.

"Nice day for something cold, yeah?" She grinned and touched her cap with the side of her hand. "What can I get you, kid?"

"Give me a sorbet," Suneo said. He swung his legs under the counter. "Cherry."

Gian scowled at Suneo's back, then glanced at the menu. His breath hitched. As if propelled by a rocket, he lunged for Suneo and grabbed at the counter to hold himself up.

"And gimme a sundae!" he blurted before Suneo could smack the greasy countertop and demand anything more expensive to suit his taste. He leaned over Suneo, scrunching his face into what he hoped was a glare to curl Suneo's toes in his loafers. Suneo, however, only smoothed back his hair with a sly grin.

The woman tapped some figures into the cash register, her nails making sharp little ticking noises against the buttons.

"That'll be ¥600 even."

Gian choked on his tonsils. "Suh––"

"What's wrong with you?" Suneo looked at him in a mixture of disgust and curiosity. "That's nothing. You said you were going to treat me? Do it."

Miserably, Gian crept his hand into his pocket, closed his sticky fist around the coins that sagged inside, and deposited them on the counter. A few brass coins rolled around before rattling to a stop. Gian hunkered low over the pile and began picking at the coins, counting them in grumbling mutters and feeling very smothered.

"Come _on, _Gian," Suneo said. He leaned over the counter and scraped the pile of money closer, and within two seconds of counting announced in his most withering voice: "Gian, this isn't enough to buy a _spoon_. What were you thinking? If you were hoping that I was going to pay for you, you were wrong. I never asked for ice cream, anyway. I should have known you'd––"

Whether the woman had sympathy or them or she feared the prospect of a riot, she coughed politely and nodded to a sandwich board propped beside a soda fountain.

"Maybe you boys can sort something out. Our special today is two plain cones, same price as one. It's nothing fancy, but it's better than nothing on a day like today, right?"

Suneo scrunched low in his seat and locked his arms over his chest to stew in fury. Gian silently pushed the pile of coins toward the woman, who corralled them and plugged them into the register. She whisked away to fetch the wrapped cones, leaving Suneo and Gian in their corner.

"If we were going to get ice cream, I wanted sorbet," Suneo said, his voice pitching high then low in a whine. "Mama says cheap ice cream has radiation in it."

"You have enough of that in you already," Gian retorted. "Why don't you just be happy I bought you something? I could'a spent that money on baseball cards."

"You couldn't have bought a sleeve for a card to go in with that!"

Before the argument could escalate further, the woman approached, holding two cones piled practically to the ceiling with swirls of vanilla ice cream. She beamed as though sunshine could shoo away the storm clouds that gathered in both Suneo's and Gian's eyes.

"Here you go, kids," she said brightly, extending the cones toward them. Gian morosely accepted his as though he were taking a death warrant. Suneo reluctantly closed his hand around the wad of napkins swaddling the cone, and drew it closer to inspect the lopsided mountain of vanilla. His nose wrinkled as if he held a cone of oily mustard instead of ice cream.

Gian led the way outside, elbowing the door to prop it open until Suneo could slide out. The heat slammed into them, nearly sacking their breath from their lungs. Suneo glanced around, then down at the cone he gripped. He looked at Gian, and his eyes narrowed into slits.

"You owe me."

"I owe _you? _You little snitch, I just spent the last of my allowance on you!"

Suneo tipped the cone toward Gian, gesturing. "You said you were going to treat me, and this isn't a treat. I didn't get my sorbet, and now if Mama finds out, she'll give me extra vitamins for two weeks just to purge all the radiation out of me."

"It'd take more than vitamins," Gian muttered into his ice cream. He ignored Suneo's glare and smashed half the ice cream into his mouth. The cold made his teeth ache and pressure swell behind his eyes, but he continued to chew the gob of ice cream vigorously. The vanilla spread through his mouth, slightly bitter and foamy.

"C'mon, Shuneo." Gian gulped and his voice cleared. "You have the ice cream and that's that. And you _better_ eat it before it melts all over the place, because if you let that go to waste after I paid for it, I'll––"

Suneo ducked down in a little cringe before cracking one eye open to peer placatingly at Gian. He straightened up, squared his shoulders, and stared at the hill of ice cream that leaned precariously to one side. He leaned back a bit, clenched his teeth around a deep breath, and in one quick jerk yanked the cone closer. His nose mashed into the peak of ice cream, and his eyes squeezed shut.

"That's one way to do it," Gian remarked. He crunched on the edge of his cone. A few soggy crumbs showered onto his shirt. "Take a plunge, like into a cold lake, huh?" He grinned, and more crumbs rained down.

Suneo kept his eyes screwed shut, his nose still pressed into the ice cream. "Sh––shut up," he said. His shoulders hiked up defensively. After a moment of doing nothing but breathing into the ice cream, he reeled his hand back. The curled peak of the ice cream stretched, then fell in a coil against the side of the cone. Suneo seemed to consider; then, swept out his tongue to hesitantly lick away the dollop of ice cream that capped his nose. He leaned his head to the side and stared into the smears of clouds as he rolled the glob of ice cream through his mouth.

After he swallowed, he looked at Gian. He gave an indifferent shrug and lifted the cone to his face again. "It's okay. I mean, I'd much rather have a carton of churned french vanilla, but this is edible. I guess."

With a haughty sniff, Suneo let his eyes fall shut and skimmed his tongue along the side of the ice cream. A pile shaved off onto his tongue, melting instantly and pooling in his mouth. It melted faster than he could lick up enough to savor, and he found himself swallowing open-mouthed in quick gulps to keep from choking.

Gian stared over the top of his cone. He slowly lowered it. His jaw went slack.

"Suneo . . . ? You okay?"

"Mfff," Suneo said, his eyebrows lowering into a grimace of concentration. He raised the cone higher. The blob of ice cream continued to slide over his hand, melting in white trails over the base of his thumb and down his wrist. Clumsily, he jutted out his elbow, craned his neck, and twisted to smooth his tongue lightly over the underside of his wrist, smearing away the streaks of ice cream. In something reminiscent of a sleepy reverie, he held his tongue there for a minute, as if to enjoy the mild sweet flavor.

Gian's gaze never shifted. He stared, as silent and heavy as a rotting log. He vaguely tore off a soggy piece of his cone and chewed, hardly noticing that it tasted as bland as cardboard. When he swallowed, it gummed up in the back of his throat, mixing with the ice cream and the spit in a ball that nearly suffocated him.

"S––Suneo?" he said again. He fidgeted. "Suneo, you're going to make yerself sick."

Suneo barely hummed a reply. Ice cream oozed down between his fingers, smudging and stickying, faster than Suneo could lap it away. Frustrated, he shifted the cone to his other hand and splayed his fingers to lick between them. One at a time, he hooked his fingers into his mouth to suck away the gluey ice cream.

"This is so sticky," he muttered, curling his fingers lightly against his chin. "It's making a mess all over the place. Mama will _kill_ me if I ruin this shirt. I just knew a sorbet would have been better than this mess."

When Gian finally remembered how to talk, he cleared his throat with a hawking cough. He snorted, then aimed his last chunk of cone at Suneo. He glared down at him for a moment, then felt his brief stint of will crumble. He averted his gaze and sucked in a breath that chilled his teeth.

"Don't––don't whine to me about your stupid shirt. And don't let my money go to waste either. I wanna play baseball so––so you better hurry and finish eating that thing instead of fooling around. It's gonna melt if you don't make it quick, and then you really _will_ have a mess on your precious shirt, and I hope your ma tears you _up_ if you do!"

Suneo cowered at the sudden escalation of Gian's voice, huddling behind his ice cream like a frightened rabbit. "You don't have to yell," he said, sulking. "I'm trying. I'm not going to suck it down in five milliseconds like _you _did. Not everybody has to be a disgusting, sloppy pig, you know."

Gian crunched his fingers into a fist that shook with indignation. "Yeah? Who's talking about being nasty, huh? Didn't yer ma ever tell you to use a _napkin_?"

Suneo looked down, briefly stung by the reminder. "Shut up," he said, crushing the wad of napkins around the cone. "I told you I'm hurrying."

"Well, make it faster! I'm gonna die if we have to hang around here in this heat for another six hours."

Suneo jumped a little, jolting and rocking forward onto the toes of his loafers. He steadied himself, and after tensing his shoulders again in preparation, brought the cone to his mouth again. He tipped the cone forward, cracked his mouth open wide, and scraped his teeth over the mound of ice cream. He winced when, presumably, the cold numbed his teeth, but lingered only an instant, however, before biting into the lump of ice cream and pulling back. When he tugged the grainy ball of ice cream loose, he maneuvered it with his tongue into the back of his mouth to hastily chew it. Before he could even swallow, he bit into the ice cream again, alternating between chewing and licking and biting until the mound of vanilla reduced to a hollowed-out slush.

Gian observed, impressed. "Now why didn't you do that earlier and save some time? Or," he added, jerking up his fist, "were you just messing with me or something?"

Benignly, Suneo picked at the soggy edge of his cone before leaning it against his mouth and painstakingly peeling a piece loose. He crunched away as though Gian weren't brandishing his fist with a challenging sneer of disgust.

"Come on, Gian, you don't have to be so mad," Suneo said, his voice muffled against his cone. Upon further consideration, he flattened his tongue against the side of the cone to listen to the crackle of it soaking in the moisture. He leaned away after a moment and swiped his dry tongue over his lips. When he looked at Gian, he pulled up his shoulders in a little shrug and grinned hopefully.

"I'm finished," he said. Delicately, he wrapped the sticky napkins around the remainder of the cone and tossed it at the disposal container propped against the side of the ice cream parlor. The wad bounced off the side and landed in a heap at Gian's feet.

Gian stared down at it for a minute. Like a gorilla pondering how to extract ants from a hill, he considered, before finally stooping down to scoop up the crumpled napkins. He held them in his hand for a long time.

"Gian!" Suneo crossed his arms and tapped his foot impatiently. "You were the one complaining about us being here all day. If you wanted to go so bad, then let's go already." Upon receiving no response, Suneo lowered his arms. "Gian? Gian! What's wrong with you?"

Abruptly, Gian shook himself, as violently as a sopping wet dog. He snapped his fingers around the napkins, spun on his heel, reeled back his arm as tight as a bungee cord, and flung his weight forward. The ball of napkins slapped against the side of the parlor and flopped into the disposal bin. Suneo and Gian stared.

"What are _you_ looking at?" Gian said. He swung around before Suneo could respond, and clenched his teeth to keep from noticing how his face burned. Sweat rolled down in temples in nothing short of rivers, only partially induced by the oppressing heat. He grabbed at his shirt to scrub down his face.

"Hey, Gian, wait up!" Suneo trotted alongside Gian, struggling to keep in stride with his lumbering pace. He bounced a bit.

"Gian," he said again, tipping his head to the side in a smug little smile, "I didn't get to tell you, but . . . ."

Gian sighed, knowing Suneo wouldn't continue until he had Gian's full attention. Gian mustered the effort to look down.

Suneo slyly slid one finger down his cheek and glanced askew. "Thanks for the ice cream. For once, I guess you were kind of right. It _was_ a treat."

Gian was only somewhat inclined to agree.

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><p><strong>Note: <strong>Yes. This was entirely self-indulgent filth. I have a serious, emotional fic in the works, though, I swear. And it has nothing to do with any Honekawa smorgasbords, unless you count grownup Suneo with coffee. But that's not the point.


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